


It's In My Honey, It's In My Milk

by redbrunja



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Angst, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-07
Updated: 2012-07-07
Packaged: 2017-11-09 08:28:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/453421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redbrunja/pseuds/redbrunja
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"Oh, Steve, Steve, Steve," Tony says, glib and patronizing. "No. No, no, no. This can only end in tears. Your tears, to be clear, because cold-blooded spies do not have tear ducts."</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's In My Honey, It's In My Milk

"Oh, Steve, Steve, Steve," Tony says, glib and patronizing. "No. No, no, no. This can only end in tears. Your tears, to be clear, because cold-blooded spies do not have tear ducts."   
  
"Tony," Steve replies, "I'd appreciate it if–"   
  
"That said, Captain America dating Mata Hari is actually pretty hilarious," Tony continues, talking right over Steve, and then the saber-toothed, genetically altered boar that they had been fighting shook itself hard enough to douse the flames coating its body and charged.   
  
There are many reasons to dislike Tony Stark. One of them is that he'll throw out earth-shaking, insulting pronouncements that turn out to be right.   
  
After the boars are captured, he, Natasha, Tony, and Janet rendezvous in the closest thing to a clearing they could find in the forest they've been chasing pigs in for three days. Tony and Janet are teasing each other while Janet checks that the animals are secured for transport, Natasha is shaking her wrists out and replacing the charges in her widow's bite, and above them all, Clint is casually crouched on a tree branch, watching Natasha.   
  
Clint is always watching Natasha. It's not that he shirks his duty - his arrows have saved every member of the Avengers at one point or another- but some extra ounce of his attention is always on Black Widow. Steve's known that since the beginning, since he and Natasha started... whatever the correct terminology is these day.  He knows enough about woman not to say as much to her but he actually finds it comforting, to know that when Natasha's in the field she will always have someone devoted to keeping her safe.   
  
Natasha looks up at him, smiles, small and private and it feels like the sun is suddenly a little bit brighter.   
  
He takes a couple steps closer to her. "Hi," he says, tongue momentarily fumbling for something to say. He pointed up. "Sounds like our ride home is a couple minutes out."   
  
"Good," she says, glances over her shoulder at Clint. He drops from his tree, ambles over towards them.   
  
Steve reminds himself that they're soldiers, brothers-in-arm, worked together for years while he was still frozen. But there is a voice inside his head (which sounds like Tony's) talking about SHIELD's hunger for control over its agents, Coulson's "death" and subsequent reappearance, and, most damning of all, the faintest flash of anger he'd seen in Natasha's eyes before she smiled brightly at him the first and only time he'd called her Nat.


End file.
